Westworld star compares new HBO show to GTA V

Westworld star Jeffrey Wright knows that despite his show’s amusement park premise, the HBO hit is way less Disney World-esque than you might expect from a theme park. In fact, it may be a bit more violent in the vein of, say, Grand Theft Auto V.

Wright sat down with Entertainment Weekly: The Show to chat about Westworld, which is earning rave reviews from critics and stellar ratings for HBO.

“The guests in the park have really stepped through the virtual reality lens into the experience,” he explained to host Ricky Camilleri. “So now they’re interacting in full form with the game that is the park, and with the characters and hosts in a way that now, we kind of experience through GTA V and these type of role-playing games.”

Wright plays Bernard Lowe, Westworld’s head of programming, in the new adaptation of the original 1973 Michael Crichton movie. He also explains how the show can be consumed by viewers in a different way than the original thanks to technological advances.

“When the Michael Crichton movie was made, we were playing Pong, right? So now we’re playing these more advanced games; we’re going to project even further down the road and try to imagine what it would be like if we actually stepped through the console and interacted with [Artificial Intelligence],” he explained.